Interdependence.org.uk

One of Interdependence.org’s priorities is seeing Bible churches work together to train people in Christian Ministry.  One part of that must be by funding and supporting people through Bible College. 

 Bible College is only part of the picture though.  There is the before and the after.  It is good to see the develpment of Apprenticeship schemes although independent churches perhaps have some catching up to do with their Anglican brothers. 

The other side of the coin is what happens after college.  The Anglican Church has an established curacy system.  Can interdependence enable us to develop something similar and appropriate?

 A third consideration might be whether or not there are some men who are called to pastoral ministry for whom attending college is not practical, or neccessarily the most effective way of learning. 

 Finally, we want to encourage the training of elders, deacons and preachers within churches, not just full time pastors.

 How might these things happen?

1. One good starting point must be the Learning to Lead and Prepared for Service courses offered through the FIEC

2. Is there a place for churches to work together by

a. Sharing the task of mentoring and coaching Apprentices

b. A few churches might club together to support someone responsible for training apprentices as a full time task

c. Smaller churches might twin with larger churches when taking on a new pastor.  This might mean that a young man looking for the equivalent of an assistantship could go into a church currently without a pastor but with the support of an experienced man at the twinned church.

Tags: Training by Dave Williams
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I’ve spent most of my life as part of two Independent Churches.  The first was an Evangelical Methodist Church in Bradford where I became a Christian and grew up through the Sunday School and Youth group.  The other an FIEC church in Rochester. 

What both Churches had in common was that they had left their previous denominations because they were unhappy with the liberal direction that those denominations were taking at the time.  Their priority was to remain distinctive as Evangelically minded, gospel focused churches.  The first, as far as I’m aware has no formal ties to any church networks, although it has always worked with others on specific projects.  The second chose to affiliate to the FIEC.

Why do I mention these churches?  The reason is that if we are going to think about what it means to co-operate together, we need to understand our history?  Why is it that we are independent.  It may be the case that some churches have  a strong tradition for independency on principled reasons (I would love to hear the views and thoughts from people from such backgrounds).  However, a lot of us are independent by accident.  What I mean is that being independent wasn’t our primary goal.  This will apply at the corporate level of church -but also for individuals who join churches, not because they are independent but because they are Bible based.

 We should think through our approach to church leadership, decision making and institutional membership.  What are the real priorities about how we do those things?  What are the pragmatic or accidental aspects of where we are now?  And to what extent do we run the risk of developing theologies to justify where we are now and even making an idol out of our independence?

Tags: Interdependence, independence by Dave Williams
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